R.E. people being surprised by changes and rejecting them from their server... Playtesting applications are open to everyone. Please consider applying and using your voice before changes go live rather than getting the pitchforks out after the fact.
While I do agree that there are more constructive ways of providing feedback than the pitchforks many people use, playtesting is not accessible to many. I playtested for a short while before burning out a bit, and then also running into other time commitments. 4:00pm Tuesday and Thursday, or 12:00pm Wednesday are not easy times for me to commit to anymore nor is it any easier for many other people. It is not a simple thing to become a playtester.
I think it is a good thing to encourage people to playtest and share their voice in a constructive manner, but the way you worded your post sounds a bit off. Given the the typical time commitments that are hard to make for many, it sounds like telling a poor person that if they don't like being poor maybe they should get a second or third job. Surely you don't mean it quite like that.
For those interested, here is a link to the application.
You're right, I don't mean it like that and I agree the times are not convenient for others. It does feel that there is a missed opportunity. Perhaps playtesting could focus on bug fixes and there be a balance test introduction focused solely on things like this. Open up the balance group to a wider audience, organise a time to get together on a server etc.
The playtesters are also required to sign a very broad NDA/copyright assignment.
In generally that only is tied to the "new features" or "breakthroughs" are not to be made public. Oh, and "don't steal our shit"
It might only cover that, but I'm not a lawyer. Read whatever you sign first.
R.E. people being surprised by changes and rejecting them from their server... Playtesting applications are open to everyone. Please consider applying and using your voice before changes go live rather than getting the pitchforks out after the fact.
While I do agree that there are more constructive ways of providing feedback than the pitchforks many people use, playtesting is not accessible to many. I playtested for a short while before burning out a bit, and then also running into other time commitments. 4:00pm Tuesday and Thursday, or 12:00pm Wednesday are not easy times for me to commit to anymore nor is it any easier for many other people. It is not a simple thing to become a playtester.
I think it is a good thing to encourage people to playtest and share their voice in a constructive manner, but the way you worded your post sounds a bit off. Given the the typical time commitments that are hard to make for many, it sounds like telling a poor person that if they don't like being poor maybe they should get a second or third job. Surely you don't mean it quite like that.
For those interested, here is a link to the application.
You're right, I don't mean it like that and I agree the times are not convenient for others. It does feel that there is a missed opportunity. Perhaps playtesting could focus on bug fixes and there be a balance test introduction focused solely on things like this. Open up the balance group to a wider audience, organise a time to get together on a server etc.
The playtesters are also required to sign a very broad NDA/copyright assignment.
In generally that only is tied to the "new features" or "breakthroughs" are not to be made public. Oh, and "don't steal our shit"
It might only cover that, but I'm not a lawyer. Read whatever you sign first.
There is a hidden clause where it says they own our souls, but that was only when Charlie used to be our dark overlord. He's now back to being our real Flayra
FrozenNew York, NYJoin Date: 2010-07-02Member: 72228Members, Constellation
The flamethrower changes may have been terrible, but I can say it's the first time in the history of the game that a tech shift has been as potentially decisive as it should be. RIP games with reasonable lengths.
MephillesGermanyJoin Date: 2013-08-07Member: 186634Members, NS2 Map Tester, NS2 Community Developer
edited December 2017
I played a couple of games now and haven't noticed an issue with the FT yet. It hurts as fuck if 4 FTs are shooting at you but this counts for every weapon. The thing is that flamethrowers are quite easy to hit with so it can be used as area denial in choke points (not saying that this is a bad thing though) but other than that I have yet to notice the OP part on FTs
The flamethrower changes may have been terrible, but I can say it's the first time in the history of the game that a tech shift has been as potentially decisive as it should be. RIP games with reasonable lengths.
Build 202's unrivaled HP regeneration using 2xGorge on an Onos was quite decisive as well
I don't see it listed (I might be blind). But did voice chat get removed for spectators? Very few games let spectators hear each team's comms, and it was really cool to listen to both teams as one mounts an attack and the other reacts to it.
I'm sitting in spectator as I read the patch notes, and I realize that both teams are very well organized for having no one talking.
I don't see it listed (I might be blind). But did voice chat get removed for spectators? Very few games let spectators hear each team's comms, and it was really cool to listen to both teams as one mounts an attack and the other reacts to it.
I'm sitting in spectator as I read the patch notes, and I realize that both teams are very well organized for having no one talking.
The ability for spectators to hear each team is a server setting. Ask the admins to enable/disable it.
I played a couple of games now and haven't noticed an issue with the FT yet. It hurts as fuck if 4 FTs are shooting at you but this counts for every weapon. The thing is that flamethrowers are quite easy to hit with so it can be used as area denial in choke points (not saying that this is a bad thing though) but other than that I have yet to notice the OP part on FTs
@Mephilles i assure you you were playing on a server that patched flamethrowers.
I played a couple of games now and haven't noticed an issue with the FT yet. It hurts as fuck if 4 FTs are shooting at you but this counts for every weapon. The thing is that flamethrowers are quite easy to hit with so it can be used as area denial in choke points (not saying that this is a bad thing though) but other than that I have yet to notice the OP part on FTs
@Mephilles i assure you you were playing on a server that patched flamethrowers.
SHHHT mang, they are gon go nerf the mods in the browser even more yo \o/
I played a couple of games now and haven't noticed an issue with the FT yet. It hurts as fuck if 4 FTs are shooting at you but this counts for every weapon. The thing is that flamethrowers are quite easy to hit with so it can be used as area denial in choke points (not saying that this is a bad thing though) but other than that I have yet to notice the OP part on FTs
@Mephilles i assure you you were playing on a server that patched flamethrowers.
@Frozen I have played on 4 different servers since then. Do you tell me all of them patched the FT? They did not by applying a balance mod of their own. I payed attention to that.
(So far I have only fought FTs as lerk or fade though)
As i've said in the broken mods API thread, this game is unplayable balance-wise, if not for the community mods. It was true before the FT buff, and it's even more true now.
One year (?) has passed since the "new" PDT arrived on the scene, and despite the misgivings of most of the players, nothing changed at the core of operations. Who thought that buffing the flamers this way was a good idea? How the hell did it not occur to playtesters that this is a terrible change?
Why can't the devs focus on technical stuff, like the ragdolls absorbing bullets? (kudos for that fix, it was long awaited). The game would benefit much more if the core dev team focused on technical and API improvements, and left the balancing to the community mods. Maybe you should survey these mods and copy the popular balance changes to the vanilla game at a regular basis.
Regarding play-testing, and the linux issues, I've applied several times for linux playtesting using the official google form, but got no reply whatsoever. It's kind of weird that us players have to make effort and chase down the opportunity to help you guys improve the game.
Seriously, with all my good heart, i wish you would get your shit together... And yet again, my complaint is not personal, you have a wealth of knowledge and skill, but the decision-making process you have seems insane. This would've been an AWESOME patch, if not for the harsh balance changes.
EDIT: Yes, I do understand that the devs are only part-time, but doesn't that call for the efficient management of their time, instead of baking up and implementing half-assed balance changes?
pSyk0mAnNerdish by NatureGermanyJoin Date: 2003-08-07Member: 19166Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Silver, NS2 Community Developer
edited January 2018
There was urgent need of a patch due to Valve's last-minute changes of the workshop and Mods not working anymore right before christmas.
They released this patch instead of enjoying weekend and christmas holidays to make Mods work again and another Flamethrower hotfix, too, after realizing that some bug is causing the overpowered Flamethrower, not the balance changes.
I understand that the Flamethrower can be frustrating to play against right now (at least I think so too), but turning this whole situation into blaming the Devs is very uncalled for, if you look at the whole picture.
Im grateful for the quick fix, i've expressed that at the dedicated thread too. Although it seems weird to me that it hit UWE by surprise. I've never worked with valve tech before, but API providers usually give a heads up well before releasing backwards-incompatible changes.
Also do understand that im not bashing the DEVS personally, im bashing their roadmap - please lets not make it an emotionally charged ad-hominem argument.
I try to look at the big picture, which seems like a mess to me. They started off by trying to make the game more noob-friendly, which resulted in bigger hitboxes (to also mitigate the effects of network lag) and HP bars. These two topics must've been among the most hotly debated topics on the forums. There were/are other technical issues which would have had a greater impact on the quality of the game (PvE optimizations for eg.), but they chose to fiddle around with well-established gameplay patterns at the expense of the comp community. That was a nasty/negligent move.
I can't emphasize enough that I do understand what it means to be developing part-time, and that's the very reason I'm trying to impress myself upon the devs: take a step back, sit down, and rethink what and how you want to develop the game;
Almost every balancing change that rolled out during the last year was problematic to say the least, and needed a community mod/another patch to override it.
On the other hand, the technical improvements were top-notch.
These two points suggest to me that the PDT should only focus on the technical aspects of the game, and leave further balancing to some kind of community contribution.
With the limited resources they have, playtesting can only uncover technical bugs, but not the balancing nuisances. And as the FT example shows, not even bugs on every occasion.
There are still so much more on the technical aspect where the game could get better:
Linux support is non-existent. I keep seeing @navazka popping up with a linux error, and he gets no response. Nor did I get any proper response when I had issues on linux, so you guys forced me to spin up a W7 to play NS2.
TL;DR;
With the limited amount of resources the devs have, they should concentrate on technical aspects, and leave balancing to the community. I imagine this as a win-win situation on the long run.
You've covered a lot, and I'm not sure I can address every point, but I'll do my best to respond to your concerns as best I can since you took the time to respectfully write them out
but API providers usually give a heads up well before releasing backwards-incompatible changes.
They did not this time, much to our dismay and mental well being.
We're currently looking into how to resolve this long term without having to outright nuke every single one of the thousands of mods on our workshop.
We'll post more info when we have more.
There were/are other technical issues which would have had a greater impact on the quality of the game (PvE optimizations for eg.), but they chose to fiddle around with well-established gameplay patterns at the expense of the comp community.
1) It's important to know that there really isn't low hanging fruit anymore in regards to performance improvements. That being said, it's still a *constant* effort that never ceases. Even the last few patches included additional LuaJIT work, reducing server overhead, and even reducing input delay for clients. This goal is ongoing and often takes *months* to develop and test, as even a simple improvement can introduce dozens of new, sneaky bugs. So if you'd like us to focus solely on those items first, you'd end up with no other changes in the interim.. but this would mean certain developers are just sitting by with nothing to do - which brings me to #2
2) There's always the misconception that in game development developmental resources are universal - that if time is spent on artwork or something similar, that it somehow takes away from performance improvements or similar. This is not the case. Development on different areas of the game are done in parallel. In truth, it is often the case that development *must* be done in parallel in order to take advantage of new tech or simply to be compatible. An example would be improvement X forces 30 something features to be updated in order to be compatible with said improvement, so the way to think of each new build/patch is that it is a holistic interlocking and interdependent system. If we have to delay improvement X for the next patch, it's often the case that it would have to be modified and updated simply to be compatible with the new build.
Lastly, we believe in a cycle of content, fixes, content, fixes etc. as it allows us the ability to put a fresh coat of paint on the game at a slow enough pace to address any outstanding or new bugs. Keep in mind that we do not feel simply sticking to bug fixes alone is enough to warrant continued development on the game. People are always providing feedback about game mechanics, balance etc. In fact, this is evident in what you said about community servers taking up the part of game designers where they are constantly making their own balance mods simply because we don't always keep up with the pace of balance desires. (and ofc, everyone feels like they know what is best)
take a step back, sit down, and rethink what and how you want to develop the game; Almost every balancing change that rolled out during the last year was problematic to say the least,
This isn't actually the case; there are plenty of changes that have resulted without a single whisper of complaint. That's typically our measure of what we did right, sadly... when the community does not respond loudly and angrily at a change. There have of course been other changes that are easy to highlight that did not go over so well, and we typically pivot or adjust - but those few controversial changes most definitely receive the loudest responses of course, and thus it can appear as it they are the only changes made.
We do actually sit down in a meeting after each patch (we have 2 a week as well) to assess how to go forward and to determine what needs addressing.
With the limited resources they have, playtesting can only uncover technical bugs, but not the balancing nuisances.
This is also not the case; the community / public only gets to see the final product pushed, and not the dozens and dozens of internal builds that were tested before then. There have been numerous changes that have received many adjustment due to PTs providing very loud feedback on what they perceived were imbalanced or poor ideas. Even when the FT was working correctly in an early internal build this patch cycle, we had two PTs who were very vocal about it still being too strong. (They rightfully so got to enjoy the "I told you so" dance now)
In today's scheduled testing for instance, it will be solely for some balance testing and prototypes we are interested in, where we wish to garner feedback from PTs after playing drills over and over again for 2 hours on only 2 mechanics. We'll more than likely adjust based on that feedback.
We also have a balance team of varying skills that are not PTs, and they often test and provide input as well before we release a patch.
Finally, we always hold a public playtest session for the community to come and test any changes before we release a patch in order to garner feedback there as well. (we were obviously unable to this last patch, sadly, due to the circumstances already mentioned)
So in short, even if you disagree with a change, do not discount the ability of UWE garnering decent feedback from multiple sources on changes, and then adjusting accordingly, before you ever see the final change.
We'll never be perfect when it comes to finding every bug, (I cannot think of a single patch in the 7 years I've been doing this that has been bug free) and not everyone will agree with balance changes that are made. In truth, change is often disliked regardless of its benefit. There are groups of people who still advocate (and run mods) for the old OP boneshield.. something we figured was universally agreed upon based on the overwhelming community feedback over the course of months. We're not going to please everyone with every change, but that does not mean we do not attempt to constantly improve and adjust where needed.
The best thing I can offer is that we ARE listening, and we DO adjust, even if we were slow to do so in the past. It took us just a few short hours after the flamethrower changes went live to find the bugs, and push out a fix.
This sounds like a nightmare to us, honestly, as it creates an incredibly inconsistent experience from server to server, and can even outright break the game.
Server X can easily think their change of double eHP Fades is a balanced change and there's no talking them out of it. This occurs often, believe it or not.
Our preferred method is to simply listen to the community on what needs fixing (right now that's unfun Exo and Onos late game play) and do our best to address it in a way that upsets the majority the least... because again.. everyone believes they are a game designer and not everyone will be happy with every change we make.
It's not a perfect solution but its the best we can do.
Thanks for taking the time to write all that up, I hope my reply provides some answers or some insight.
Take care
MephillesGermanyJoin Date: 2013-08-07Member: 186634Members, NS2 Map Tester, NS2 Community Developer
@trixX if you feel like devs are making poor decisions on balance, as a playtester you can influence those decisions into directions you think are right. If you can back up your reasoning I doubt your voice will be unheared. Playtesters are needed / wanted
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
Ok I am confused here as to why people complain about thise, rather large, buff to flamethrower. So let me try to explain my confusion.
lets start with a comment from Mofo. I only picked his comment as its the most clear for my own argument, so lets keep any comments about the person im quoting out the conversation ok?
I am speaking to EVERYONE for the sake of this conversation.
When a flamer can solo a skulk and gorge on a single clip... there's no arguing that isn't broken.
...[/i] Crazy to think we lost that entire community because of some idiotic and completely pointless whitelist nonsense.
Now the price of a flamethrower has changed over time so I am unsure of the exact pricing at the moment, but I remember it being even more expensive than a shotgun. (I think it was what, 35?)
So we are talking about mid tech 20+ resources weaponry which can destroy a bunch of free resources skulks and a 8 res gorge.
A shotgun can easily, EASILY kill 1 skulk and a gorge. A riffle can do this. The free rifle we spawn with.
So why the hate? Because its a AoE attack? Because we are not used to it?
Yes my fade recently died to a flamethrower, and do you know why? (minus that my fade isnt that great) Because it was used so few times, that I had no clue how to judge the energy drain or damage tick.
Learn > account for it > leave in time. You are leaving in time vs any other weapon right? So why not the flamethrower?
Why is a expensive weapon which can have a good job of killing aliens such a problem?
The fade isnt that much more expensive than a flamethrower and can wreck marines. Assuming I misremember and its closer to a lerk, even those can wreck marines quite well.
I fail to see the immediate problem.
Flamethrower was next to useless before. Yes it had 'uses' except that every other weapon did it more cheap and more efficient.
I was strongly in favor of a strong flamethrower, but the version they released was too strong. A skilled player could instantly kill two skulks, but with the flamethrower anyone had that power. Shotguns are incredible OP but are limited by the skill necessary to use them. The version of the flamethrower they put out was nearly as strong as the shotgun and anybody could use it effectively at a low cost of 15 pres. Can you imagine how poorly the game would play if everyone could do meatshots every shot with the shotgun? That is how strong it was.
I even played a few games where marines did everything they could to rush flamethrowers as soon as possible. Then we would walk into the hive and win.
Edit: To clarify, I am speaking about what it was for the first 8 or so hours after b320 before the hotfix. I am not willing to comment on its current strength.
Mobile issues. Everytime I try to post from my phone the result is "I was strongly in favor of a strong." Keats, go away. Put what I was trying to say in the first attempt now that I am at a desktop.
Even when the FT was working correctly in an early internal build this patch cycle, we had two PTs who were very vocal about it still being too strong. (They rightfully so got to enjoy the "I told you so" dance now)
At least it was well tested with a FT mod on the server and released imbalanced as a result. Or maybe it was the countless we can't type values correct in our code so we released it broken with typos everytime too.
The hate came from how insanely fast the FT killed... However it should be noted what you quoted was my first impression after playing with the bugged version though, it was literally a rapid fire shotgun.. Just tap the trigger and you've killed a skulk and the gorge that was healing them.
Now that the bug was hotfixed the FT change doesn't seem as bad.
MephillesGermanyJoin Date: 2013-08-07Member: 186634Members, NS2 Map Tester, NS2 Community Developer
I think everyone (even the devs) agree that the bugged FT was too strong. If all of this is because of the bugged FT I don't see the point of this discussion since it has been fixed already
Regarding play-testing, and the linux issues, I've applied several times for linux playtesting using the official google form, but got no reply whatsoever. It's kind of weird that us players have to make effort and chase down the opportunity to help you guys improve the game.
@trixX if you feel like devs are making poor decisions on balance, as a playtester you can influence those decisions into directions you think are right. If you can back up your reasoning I doubt your voice will be unheared. Playtesters are needed / wanted
I clearly can understand his frustration regarding this point.
I now have more experience with the post-bug flamethrower. It does feel better than the first version. I think I might like it stronger still, but at a higher cost. I don't know where that line is though. Does anyone else think that there is still some room to increase the strength of the flamethrower without it being the uber noob tube it was with the bug?
Nerfing the railgun exo whilst raising the pres cost has resulted in little point in purchasing the railgun on public servers now, if anything retaining the original pres cost would of been the way forward.
There is little incentive to using the railgun anymore IMHO
Comments
It might only cover that, but I'm not a lawyer. Read whatever you sign first.
There is a hidden clause where it says they own our souls, but that was only when Charlie used to be our dark overlord. He's now back to being our real Flayra
Are you telling me this or commenting generally?
Build 202's unrivaled HP regeneration using 2xGorge on an Onos was quite decisive as well
I'm sitting in spectator as I read the patch notes, and I realize that both teams are very well organized for having no one talking.
The ability for spectators to hear each team is a server setting. Ask the admins to enable/disable it.
@Mephilles i assure you you were playing on a server that patched flamethrowers.
SHHHT mang, they are gon go nerf the mods in the browser even more yo \o/
@Frozen I have played on 4 different servers since then. Do you tell me all of them patched the FT? They did not by applying a balance mod of their own. I payed attention to that.
(So far I have only fought FTs as lerk or fade though)
As i've said in the broken mods API thread, this game is unplayable balance-wise, if not for the community mods. It was true before the FT buff, and it's even more true now.
One year (?) has passed since the "new" PDT arrived on the scene, and despite the misgivings of most of the players, nothing changed at the core of operations. Who thought that buffing the flamers this way was a good idea? How the hell did it not occur to playtesters that this is a terrible change?
Why can't the devs focus on technical stuff, like the ragdolls absorbing bullets? (kudos for that fix, it was long awaited). The game would benefit much more if the core dev team focused on technical and API improvements, and left the balancing to the community mods. Maybe you should survey these mods and copy the popular balance changes to the vanilla game at a regular basis.
Regarding play-testing, and the linux issues, I've applied several times for linux playtesting using the official google form, but got no reply whatsoever. It's kind of weird that us players have to make effort and chase down the opportunity to help you guys improve the game.
Seriously, with all my good heart, i wish you would get your shit together... And yet again, my complaint is not personal, you have a wealth of knowledge and skill, but the decision-making process you have seems insane. This would've been an AWESOME patch, if not for the harsh balance changes.
EDIT: Yes, I do understand that the devs are only part-time, but doesn't that call for the efficient management of their time, instead of baking up and implementing half-assed balance changes?
They released this patch instead of enjoying weekend and christmas holidays to make Mods work again and another Flamethrower hotfix, too, after realizing that some bug is causing the overpowered Flamethrower, not the balance changes.
I understand that the Flamethrower can be frustrating to play against right now (at least I think so too), but turning this whole situation into blaming the Devs is very uncalled for, if you look at the whole picture.
Also do understand that im not bashing the DEVS personally, im bashing their roadmap - please lets not make it an emotionally charged ad-hominem argument.
I try to look at the big picture, which seems like a mess to me. They started off by trying to make the game more noob-friendly, which resulted in bigger hitboxes (to also mitigate the effects of network lag) and HP bars. These two topics must've been among the most hotly debated topics on the forums. There were/are other technical issues which would have had a greater impact on the quality of the game (PvE optimizations for eg.), but they chose to fiddle around with well-established gameplay patterns at the expense of the comp community. That was a nasty/negligent move.
I can't emphasize enough that I do understand what it means to be developing part-time, and that's the very reason I'm trying to impress myself upon the devs: take a step back, sit down, and rethink what and how you want to develop the game;
Almost every balancing change that rolled out during the last year was problematic to say the least, and needed a community mod/another patch to override it.
On the other hand, the technical improvements were top-notch.
These two points suggest to me that the PDT should only focus on the technical aspects of the game, and leave further balancing to some kind of community contribution.
With the limited resources they have, playtesting can only uncover technical bugs, but not the balancing nuisances. And as the FT example shows, not even bugs on every occasion.
There are still so much more on the technical aspect where the game could get better:
Linux support is non-existent. I keep seeing @navazka popping up with a linux error, and he gets no response. Nor did I get any proper response when I had issues on linux, so you guys forced me to spin up a W7 to play NS2.
TL;DR;
With the limited amount of resources the devs have, they should concentrate on technical aspects, and leave balancing to the community. I imagine this as a win-win situation on the long run.
You've covered a lot, and I'm not sure I can address every point, but I'll do my best to respond to your concerns as best I can since you took the time to respectfully write them out
They did not this time, much to our dismay and mental well being.
We're currently looking into how to resolve this long term without having to outright nuke every single one of the thousands of mods on our workshop.
We'll post more info when we have more. 1) It's important to know that there really isn't low hanging fruit anymore in regards to performance improvements. That being said, it's still a *constant* effort that never ceases. Even the last few patches included additional LuaJIT work, reducing server overhead, and even reducing input delay for clients. This goal is ongoing and often takes *months* to develop and test, as even a simple improvement can introduce dozens of new, sneaky bugs. So if you'd like us to focus solely on those items first, you'd end up with no other changes in the interim.. but this would mean certain developers are just sitting by with nothing to do - which brings me to #2
2) There's always the misconception that in game development developmental resources are universal - that if time is spent on artwork or something similar, that it somehow takes away from performance improvements or similar. This is not the case. Development on different areas of the game are done in parallel. In truth, it is often the case that development *must* be done in parallel in order to take advantage of new tech or simply to be compatible. An example would be improvement X forces 30 something features to be updated in order to be compatible with said improvement, so the way to think of each new build/patch is that it is a holistic interlocking and interdependent system. If we have to delay improvement X for the next patch, it's often the case that it would have to be modified and updated simply to be compatible with the new build.
Lastly, we believe in a cycle of content, fixes, content, fixes etc. as it allows us the ability to put a fresh coat of paint on the game at a slow enough pace to address any outstanding or new bugs. Keep in mind that we do not feel simply sticking to bug fixes alone is enough to warrant continued development on the game. People are always providing feedback about game mechanics, balance etc. In fact, this is evident in what you said about community servers taking up the part of game designers where they are constantly making their own balance mods simply because we don't always keep up with the pace of balance desires. (and ofc, everyone feels like they know what is best)
This isn't actually the case; there are plenty of changes that have resulted without a single whisper of complaint. That's typically our measure of what we did right, sadly... when the community does not respond loudly and angrily at a change. There have of course been other changes that are easy to highlight that did not go over so well, and we typically pivot or adjust - but those few controversial changes most definitely receive the loudest responses of course, and thus it can appear as it they are the only changes made.
We do actually sit down in a meeting after each patch (we have 2 a week as well) to assess how to go forward and to determine what needs addressing.
This is also not the case; the community / public only gets to see the final product pushed, and not the dozens and dozens of internal builds that were tested before then. There have been numerous changes that have received many adjustment due to PTs providing very loud feedback on what they perceived were imbalanced or poor ideas. Even when the FT was working correctly in an early internal build this patch cycle, we had two PTs who were very vocal about it still being too strong. (They rightfully so got to enjoy the "I told you so" dance now)
In today's scheduled testing for instance, it will be solely for some balance testing and prototypes we are interested in, where we wish to garner feedback from PTs after playing drills over and over again for 2 hours on only 2 mechanics. We'll more than likely adjust based on that feedback.
We also have a balance team of varying skills that are not PTs, and they often test and provide input as well before we release a patch.
Finally, we always hold a public playtest session for the community to come and test any changes before we release a patch in order to garner feedback there as well. (we were obviously unable to this last patch, sadly, due to the circumstances already mentioned)
So in short, even if you disagree with a change, do not discount the ability of UWE garnering decent feedback from multiple sources on changes, and then adjusting accordingly, before you ever see the final change.
We'll never be perfect when it comes to finding every bug, (I cannot think of a single patch in the 7 years I've been doing this that has been bug free) and not everyone will agree with balance changes that are made. In truth, change is often disliked regardless of its benefit. There are groups of people who still advocate (and run mods) for the old OP boneshield.. something we figured was universally agreed upon based on the overwhelming community feedback over the course of months. We're not going to please everyone with every change, but that does not mean we do not attempt to constantly improve and adjust where needed.
The best thing I can offer is that we ARE listening, and we DO adjust, even if we were slow to do so in the past. It took us just a few short hours after the flamethrower changes went live to find the bugs, and push out a fix.
This sounds like a nightmare to us, honestly, as it creates an incredibly inconsistent experience from server to server, and can even outright break the game.
Server X can easily think their change of double eHP Fades is a balanced change and there's no talking them out of it. This occurs often, believe it or not.
Our preferred method is to simply listen to the community on what needs fixing (right now that's unfun Exo and Onos late game play) and do our best to address it in a way that upsets the majority the least... because again.. everyone believes they are a game designer and not everyone will be happy with every change we make.
It's not a perfect solution but its the best we can do.
Thanks for taking the time to write all that up, I hope my reply provides some answers or some insight.
Take care
lets start with a comment from Mofo. I only picked his comment as its the most clear for my own argument, so lets keep any comments about the person im quoting out the conversation ok?
I am speaking to EVERYONE for the sake of this conversation.
Now the price of a flamethrower has changed over time so I am unsure of the exact pricing at the moment, but I remember it being even more expensive than a shotgun. (I think it was what, 35?)
So we are talking about mid tech 20+ resources weaponry which can destroy a bunch of free resources skulks and a 8 res gorge.
A shotgun can easily, EASILY kill 1 skulk and a gorge. A riffle can do this. The free rifle we spawn with.
So why the hate? Because its a AoE attack? Because we are not used to it?
Yes my fade recently died to a flamethrower, and do you know why? (minus that my fade isnt that great) Because it was used so few times, that I had no clue how to judge the energy drain or damage tick.
Learn > account for it > leave in time. You are leaving in time vs any other weapon right? So why not the flamethrower?
Why is a expensive weapon which can have a good job of killing aliens such a problem?
The fade isnt that much more expensive than a flamethrower and can wreck marines. Assuming I misremember and its closer to a lerk, even those can wreck marines quite well.
I fail to see the immediate problem.
Flamethrower was next to useless before. Yes it had 'uses' except that every other weapon did it more cheap and more efficient.
I even played a few games where marines did everything they could to rush flamethrowers as soon as possible. Then we would walk into the hive and win.
Edit: To clarify, I am speaking about what it was for the first 8 or so hours after b320 before the hotfix. I am not willing to comment on its current strength.
At least it was well tested with a FT mod on the server and released imbalanced as a result. Or maybe it was the countless we can't type values correct in our code so we released it broken with typos everytime too.
The hate came from how insanely fast the FT killed... However it should be noted what you quoted was my first impression after playing with the bugged version though, it was literally a rapid fire shotgun.. Just tap the trigger and you've killed a skulk and the gorge that was healing them.
Now that the bug was hotfixed the FT change doesn't seem as bad.
@DC_Darkling the FT is 15 pres btw
I clearly can understand his frustration regarding this point.
There is little incentive to using the railgun anymore IMHO